Still, Golding ushered me to the darkened office, obviously his, where he removed his hat and set down his umbrella. I followed, mostly to get away from the glare of the unaccountably hostile Sadie. “I’ve interrupted you,” I said in apology. “You were on your way somewhere.”
“Somewhere!” Golding said, as if I was joking. He pulled out the chair behind his desk and lowered his large bulk into it with a creak. “Just to the doctor’s, where he’ll lecture me yet again about my heart. He worries about that organ more than I do. No—” He sat back and laced his hands across his rather sizable stomach. “An unexpected visit from The Fantastique trumps all.”
I quickly ran my mind over what I knew about Paul Golding. It wasn’t much. He’d been president of the New Society since the war ended; before that, according to what James had told me, he’d served as an officer in the war. The papers, when they mentioned him at all, dismissed him as an eccentric or a fraud, an attitude I was well familiar with. And he had run the tests that labeled my mother a fake and my own powers “inconclusive and unproven.”
“I hope this isn’t about the newspaper article,” Golding said to me. “We had nothing to do with that.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’m here about—” I hadn’t realized what I was there for, really, until I’d already arrived. “I’m here about Gloria Sutter.”
Paul Golding’s features lost their joviality, and it was no act. “That girl,” he said. “That poor, wonderful, irreplaceable girl.” He swallowed. “I thought you two were not on speaking terms.”
I shook my head, not willing to explain it to a stranger. “You must have spent a lot of time with her,” I said. “You knew her well.”
“I was well acquainted with her, but James is my researcher. He had more contact with her than I did.” A hint of humor crossed his expression again. “He isn’t here, by the way. In fact, he hasn’t reported to work in several days. I believe he’s been spending most of that time with you.”
I frowned at him. “Not exactly.”
“That’s not what he says.” Golding shrugged. “I’d reprimand him if not for the fact that I don’t pay him much, and his job comes with an utter lack of respect and heaps of abuse. And I know better than to try to rein him in. Gloria’s death seems to have awakened his Galahad instincts.”
I had questions to ask about Gloria, but I couldn’t help myself. “What do you mean, you know better than to rein him in?”
“James is independent,” Golding replied. “We gave him his own desk at first, but we soon discovered he didn’t much like to use it. He likes to work alone, in his own flat or out on investigation. He’s the best investigator I’ve ever seen—quite simply splendid. He’s investigated hundreds of supernatural claims firsthand, and his skill in ferreting out frauds is unmatched in this country or any other.” He smiled a little, unashamed of the effusive praise. “Frankly, he should be doing something that brings him renown, not ridicule, but I can’t convince him of that. And until I do, I get the benefit of his investigative brain.”
James had been wrong about me, of course, and about my mother. I’ve thought a lot about that day, he’d said. Something was not quite right.
“As for you,” Golding said, “I see you’re still in business.”
I was no longer angry, but it galled me still that these people thought me a liar. I recalled what my mother had taught me about attempting greater and greater feats for a disbelieving audience. She was right: There was no peace in it. “When was the last time you saw Gloria?” I asked him.
“Last year,” Golding replied. “I went to one of her séances, in fact. I had seen her in our testing environment any number of times, but I felt the need to see her work in her own space. She knew who I was and why I was there. I made no attempt to keep it secret.”
“But the article James wrote was already years old by then,” I said.
“Yes, I know. I was going through a—well, you could call it a crisis of faith, I suppose, though not of the religious kind. We had launched a large project asking the public to write us their experiences with the supernormal—a psychical census, of sorts. We’d been inundated with letters, but it seemed they were all frauds, misconceptions, delusions, dreams, or outright lies.” The corners of his eyes relaxed, and his expression grew distant and a little tired. “Humanity is sometimes terrible, desperate, and sad. I felt a need to see Gloria Sutter in action again, to be reminded of what it is like to be in the presence of a true spirit medium.”
“You still believe she was a real medium?” I asked.
“Yes. Gloria Sutter was the most incredibly talented medium I’ve ever seen. She was a phenomenon of nature, and her loss is a permanent tragedy to the future of scientific study of the supernormal.”
And to me. The words almost tripped out of my mouth before I could stop them. It is a permanent tragedy to me. But I only looked at him in silence as the pieces clicked in my head and I came to a realization. This man had admired Gloria, and he had appreciated her worth to science, but he hadn’t loved her. I was starting to think that except for me and possibly Davies, no one had.
Paul Golding raised his eyebrows politely, taking in my silence. “Miss Winter?”
“I’m going to find her murderer,” I said to him.
He took this in with barely a blink. “Indeed. And this is what James has been helping you with?”
“Yes.”
“I knew he was looking into it, but I thought it was for his own satisfaction. He feels he owes her a debt.” Golding took a piece of paper from his desk and uncapped a pen. “I have no faith in the police, Miss Winter, and you and I have something of a checkered past. However”—now he was writing quickly, with a flourish—“I do have faith in James Hawley.” He handed me the paper, on which was written an address. “Please make good use of him and return him to me in one piece. You’ll find him at his flat, I believe.”